It’s nine in the morning and Denny’s bar is empty. It’s a hole-in-the-wall that’s situated toward the end of the aging strip mall in the neighborhood where I do my business. It’s sticky floors, old tables and chairs, a pool table, neon signs at night for light and lots and lots of alcohol for people who have been ridden hard by life.

The front door is wide-open and the muggy summer air creeps in. It’s the type of day where my shirt will stick to me like a second skin before noon and I’ll regret not being a ponytail type of girl.

My stomach grumbles so loudly that Denny raises an eyebrow. It’s a funny look on the towering man. Rachel thinks he looks like Vin Diesel with his shaved head and overly large muscles. A lot of people in the neighborhood think of stone walls and a guy who breaks up bar fights by crashing glass bottles over their heads when his name is mentioned. I see none of those things when I walk in here. I just spot a big, giant teddy bear.

After all, he gave me a quarter of the stuffed animals now hanging in my room.

“Have you seen Mac?” I ask. My great-uncle works in the auto shop near here.

“Will it make you feel better if I say no?”

Which means he has and Mac’s on another bender. It’s an expected disappointment that only surface hurts—the type of pain that only goes right below the skin, but no deeper.

“How’s your grandmother?” Denny’s one of a handful of people who know she exists and that’s because Denny is the only person in the world my father trusted.

“She has a specialist appointment today.” She’s been staring off into the distance lately and it’s different from the times when we just lose her to her mind. It’s a blank, scary look and then she snaps back. “Nate thinks she’s having mini strokes.”

Denny chews on that and his bacon for a few minutes. I can tell by his expression that he thinks the specialist appointment is a waste of my money. She’s ninety, and when I take her into doctors that’s what they say to me as an explanation and as their diagnosis and prognosis.

Grams isn’t just ninety to me. She’s one of the few people I allow myself to love.

“Do you need me to change West’s hours?” Denny switches the conversation and I shake my head as an answer. I’ve been avoiding the bar for dinner for the past week because I’m avoiding West. He works for Denny at night doing odd jobs.

“How is he?”

Denny knows everything—how I’ve cut ties with my friends in order to protect them and Logan from my career choices. Unfortunately, he’s had to deal with some of the fallout.

“Pissed. He’s mad I won’t tell him anything on you. Spent last night slamming near everything around here. Stomping his feet like a two-year-old. It would be funny if I didn’t like him.”

A sickening sensation sloshes around inside me. Denny and West have a messed-up relationship to begin with and I don’t like being in the middle of something Denny thought he lost years ago when West was in diapers.

I push around my food and try to ignore the pain and the desperate need to ask if Denny has heard anything from Logan. Not that they know each other, not that I think Logan would think to stop by here, but maybe Denny overhead West talking to him or just...dammit...I’ve heard nothing from Logan since he left my room last week and that’s not okay. It is, but it isn’t and I understand that girls are confusing.

“I’ll stop coming around here if it will help. The only time West can work with you is at night.” It’s a seriously empty offer, but if Denny agreed, I’d do it.

It’s funny, I had been on my own for so long that I was used to being alone. Fine with just having Isaiah and Denny around on occasion in case I needed decent human interaction, but after making friends then dumping my friends...alone just feels so sickening...lonely.

“Not an option.” Denny could kill with the look he shoots me. “West’s got a lot to learn how this neighborhood works, but he’s smart. Won’t take long for him to figure it out.”

I squish my lips to the side and pick at my pancakes with the plastic fork wondering if West needs to be schooled on this way of life. He’s here because he’s curious about Denny, a man he recently found out he’s related to. West will start college this fall and then will move a long way away from here and on to having a very, very decent life.

“Kid, if you don’t eat, your dad’s going to be pissed and that’s going to make me pissed. No one likes it when I’m angry.”

I roll my eyes. “No one thinks you’re scary. You might as well be running a day care for border collies instead of a halfway house for drunks with a criminal record.”

“Everyone thinks I’m scary.” A shadow falls over his face and I do spot the demons in him that everyone else senses, but considering Satan hangs with me on a daily basis all I see are kittens bathing in sunlight.

I force the food into my mouth and down my throat, not because he’s scary but because I’ll seriously hate being hungry later when I skip dinner for the eighth time in a row to avoid my former friends. Sure, I make money, but I need it all to pay for the nurses, my grandmother’s medical bills that aren’t covered by Medicare and upkeep of the house. Acting adult and responsible sucks and it’s also expensive.

Because Denny and Dad were best friends, non blood brothers, and cared for each other in the way it counted as they grew up in this neighborhood, Denny feeds me and because I love my dad, I let Denny buy the food and I show. It makes Dad feel good that I’m relying on at least one person not related to drugs.